It's always the same plan, it's only the cover page that changes.
The Huffington Post got five economists to review the 40-ish "jobs bills" that House Speaker John Boehner has been lauding as a fine accomplishment of House Republicans. The news that the "jobs bills" would not actually create very many jobs is not news at all, since they are almost all tax cut or deregulation bills of the usual variety with the word "jobs" scrawled on top in whatever felt-tip marker was available on that day, but the dismissal of those "expert" opinions by Boehner's spokesperson is
a fine example of its genre:
Almost none of those measures, the economists said, are likely to have the measurable, immediate impact on job growth that Boehner claimed his party would have delivered. Instead, the bills would serve more to promote other parts of the Republicans' agenda -- and, in most cases, aid large corporations.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said he was unimpressed with the economists' findings. “Notwithstanding cherry-picked ‘expert’ opinions, the American people understand that expanding the supply of domestic energy, reducing regulations, improving education, and cutting wasteful spending will help our economy grow and create jobs,” Steel said in an email.
Stupid experts with their stupid expert knowledge on things. The American
people know that only jerks and communists listen to
experts rather than just going with whatever they "understand" to be true. I believe Stephen Colbert has been making that point for as long as he has had a show, and it looks like his show will be ending without anyone explaining the show's longest running joke to Michael Steel. What Colbert knows is what Fox News knows, which is what Michael Steel knows: The heart of Republicanism is to do whatever you damn well want because "the experts" in every field of human endeavor cannot possibly compete with your own understanding-based wisdom of the Now.
The largest number of bills are aimed at deregulating the energy sector. Republicans claim this would promote job creation by saving companies a lot of money they now spend complying with federal rules.
"It's sort of a classic argument," said Barry Rabe, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in environmental policy. But he said it's difficult to measure the economic impact, if any, these bills would have in the short term—the period in which Americans are looking for more jobs.
It's a bit sketchy how "saving companies a lot of money" translates into new jobs, seeing that we've had quite a bit of that of late and none of it has translated into jobs very well at all, but let's be reality-based: There are plenty of ways deregulating the energy sector would lead to additional jobs. There would be a sudden surge in the need for pediatricians, and for new cancer wards, and a booming number of entry-level jobs in the lucrative fields of bird-toweling and toxic muck removal. The claims that the Keystone pipeline will itself create one hundred eleventy billion new jobs are commonplace as well, presumably because the "pipeline" will in fact be a bucket brigade of people just passing the oil from the Canadian border to the Gulf Coast via little pails.
Then there's the tax cut bills, the theory of which have been debunked by Good God Have Any Of You Been Awake The Last Four Decades, and some charter school bills, which would create jobs by firing public school teachers and then a miracle happens, or bills to gut food aid to the unemployed because then people would be even more motivated go out and get jobs that do not exist, sucks to be them, and bills to repeal Obamacare that count as jobs bills because apparently taking people's health insurance away is also a damn fine motivator.
We can look forward to two years of this. Well, probably one year, and then a year of do-nothingism as various Republicans try to sell themselves as presidential material. Won't that be fun.